


Tread Lightly

by Darkly_Humorous



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Fun with Sharp Objects, Gen, Improper burial, Serial Killers, So Many Severed Heads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 14:54:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21181289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkly_Humorous/pseuds/Darkly_Humorous
Summary: Before he and Bill interview a certain killer clown, Holden seeks advice and enlightenment from someone else who has a penchant for burying bodies in the backyard. Knowledge of that sort can come at a high price.





	Tread Lightly

**Author's Note:**

> Have some free advice, kids: don't stay up to the ass-crack of dawn researching serial killers. You will be sad and tired. And you'll write stuff like this. 
> 
> Also, obviously I'm not a profiler. So take certain segments with a big old boulder of salt.

"I want to be honest with you, Holden."

On the other side of the table, Holden stopped fiddling with the suddenly temperamental tape recorder. He looked across to Ed. The serial killer was sitting up straight, even leaning forward a little. His usual relaxed slouch, one leg slung over the other, was nowhere to be seen.

"Did you lie about something, Ed? Or change your mind about something in a past interview? If you could give me a minute-"

There was suddenly a knife on the table. Ed placed it casually, like it was a poker hand with a moderate chance of taking the pot. Ed made sure his hands were nowhere near the weapon once he'd deposited it. Even so, all the saliva in Holden's mouth evaporated.

The knife was obviously a prison shank, not something that had been manufactured by a factory and stolen from the kitchen. The blade itself was glass, and someone had made a handle to protect their hands by wrapping black electrical tape around the end of the shaft.

"W-what's that?" Holden asked dumbly.

"It's a piece of glass wrapped in tape. If you'd like the specifics, the glass is from a broken coffee pot. I have a...friend...who works in the kitchen. He's clumsy when it's convenient for him to be."

Even in his dazed terror, Holden picked up on the long pause as Ed had searched for the word "friend." Holden wondered if the pause had been because friendship was such a foreign concept to Ed, the word wasn't readily available in his vocabulary, or if Ed wasn't sure what term to use and needed time to decide. Either way, the fact that someone in the prison would provide such raw materials to Ed was terrifying.

"What do you plan to do with it?" Holden asked.

Ed shrugged. "Maybe nothing. Maybe something. That's what I want to be honest about. I want to give you the chance to leave."

Holden glanced at the doors, heavy bars firmly locked. "You'd let me walk away."

"Only if you do it now. If you stay, you're putting your life in my hands."

And what hands they were. Ed was still keeping them far away from the knife, but even with nothing in them, those hands were dangerous. Deadly. Holden recalled Ed drawing a finger across his throat, demonstrating the phrase "ear-to-ear" and explaining its literal meaning. Instructions. You don't want to, you _have_ to. The sensation of a finger skating over skin, a bloodless metaphor.

He'd have to be insane not to escape. And, as soon as he was clear, to report Ed and his "friend" for the contraband. Weapons were not looked at kindly in prison. And while Ed could probably stare at a blank wall in solitary all day and never complain, his friend might not feel the same.

"Do you know what a captive bolt pistol is?"

Holden was startled out of his logical fantasy. "Hmm, I-"

"Before I tell you, I want to stress that the door is closing, Holden. If you're on that side of it, I won't think any less of you and I can't touch you. If you're on this side of it, I may give you invaluable information. Or I might cut your head off. Or both."

Holden looked from Ed to the door. It would take five seconds to cover the distance, hail a guard away from the smoke break they weren't supposed to be having, and leave Vacaville in the dust. They didn't need Ed's perverse expertise. Would it help? Absolutely. But was it worth being beheaded and posthumously fucked? Decidedly not.

"I don't know, what is it?"

Ed beamed. "You can turn the tape recorder on for this."

Holden hoped he'd cured the device of whatever was ailing it. If this tape ended up being the last thing he contributed to humanity's body of criminal knowledge, he needed to know it would be preserved.

"We can do a test-run if you need to," Ed said, as though reading Holden's anxiety.

"Let's do that." Holden pressed the record button, and the tape began winding slowly.

Ed considered for a moment what to say before settling on "she sells sea shells by the seashore."

Holden rewound the tape and played it. Ed's voice repeated the tongue-twister perfectly. Satisfied that, even if he was killed, the tape would capture whatever insight Ed had to offer, Holden started recording.

"As I was saying before your little technical difficulty: a captive bolt pistol. It looks something like a gun, but instead of firing a bullet, it fires a retractable metal rod," Ed explained.

That was all very nice, but Holden had no idea what Ed expected him to do with this information. So, against his better judgement, he decided to ask. "What do you do with a gun like that?"

"You give cattle a more humane death. In the old days, they used to strike cattle in the head with a sledgehammer, to make them more agreeable to having their throats cut. As someone familiar with both slitting throats and killing with a hammer, I can tell you, there are a lot of ways to screw up both processes. A captive bolt pistol is much easier to use than a hammer and it works just as well."

On the surface, it was grim factoids about where steaks came from. As someone facing the prospect of having his neck sliced open, however, Holden read between the lines. Was Ed subtly asking him if he preferred to be knocked unconscious before he was killed? Or was Ed just making what passed for polite conversation in his diseased mind?

"Are you saying, if you could-"

"I would have used a bolt pistol on my victims before I killed them? Sure. It would have been easier for me and for them. But the reason you're here has nothing to do with 'easy,' does it?" Ed asked.

No, the deaths Holden had come to contemplate with Ed were anything but easy. They were long, drawn-out, gruesome. And before Holden and Bill talked to the monster responsible, they needed some answers, or at least some expert testimony.

"I read through the list of topics you sent me." A look momentarily came over Ed's face, and Holden had no idea how to categorize it. Wistfulness, nostalgia, jealousy? Something not quite on the typical human spectrum but relegated to people like Ed?

Before Holden could decide what to label it, it was gone and Ed continued, "You'd better talk to this one quick."

Holden and Bill had decided it was best not to tell Ed exactly why they were sending him the questionnaire. No names were named, to avoid influencing Ed or triggering any biases he might have. They wanted pure data about why Ed had done the things he'd done, not Ed going on for six years about which serial killer had the proverbial bigger dick.

"Why is that?" Holden asked.

"Because they're going to fry him. Or shoot him. Or however the good people of Illinois do it," Ed replied.

"You figured it out?" There went Holden's hope for objective analysis.

"There aren't that many reasons to ask me why I brought the bodies home, kept them around until they became unpleasant, and buried some of them on my property. They let me read newspapers, Holden. And watch the ten o'clock news."

"You've been following the case?"

Ed shrugged "Who hasn't? It's not something you can look away from. Thirty people tortured, killed, and buried under a house by a clown."

"That's a succinct way of putting it," Holden said. "But I'm more interested in your own logic, Ed. I don't want to focus on what you think about Gacy. I want to know what drove you?"

"I've already told you what I did to those heads," Ed said. "Including my mother's."

Holden had indeed heard, in graphic detail, what atrocities had been visited on Ed's decapitated trophies. And the bad pun Ed had committed, forcing the buried heads to "look up" at his mother. Holden wasn't here for a rehash, though. He wanted to find the deeper logic. If there was any.

"I kept the heads because the head contains everything valuable about a person. The eyes, the mouth, the brain. It was about possession. And sex. And love."

"Love?" Holden asked in disbelief.

Ed nodded slowly. His eyes took on the untethered look of someone in a daydream. "I didn't kill those girls because I hated them. I killed them because I wanted them. I wanted to fuck them, sure, but I also wanted to talk to them. That's one of the reasons I kept them. So I could have a conversation, get to know them better."

"They were severed heads. How- how do you have a conversation with a severed head?"

"Hamlet had a conversation with a jester's skull," Ed responded. "I imagined what they might say to me. Don't belittle me, Holden. I'm not going to claim they actually talked."

Holden wasn't even sure Ed meant to do it, but the serial killer's right hand clenched into a fist mere inches from the makeshift knife on the table. The FBI agent held up his own empty hands, trying to defuse Ed. "I didn't mean to imply anything."

Ed's hands relaxed and he tented them fingertip to fingertip. "I had a rich fantasy life, you know this, too. It was easy to imagine a date with these girls. Maybe even a life. I didn't want a corpse; I wanted a normal relationship with a woman. I couldn't have what I really wanted, so I settled."

Though he'd told himself he wouldn't do it, wouldn't ask for Ed's opinion on the case, Holden couldn't help himself. "Do you think Gacy also acted out of love? His version of it, at least?"

Ed snorted. "Do you have a more fucked-up definition of love than I do?"

Holden sure as shit hoped not. He tried to phrase his response more gently before Ed cut him off.

"Have you ever heard of the Cambodian Killing Fields? Seen pictures? They're mass graves, and not very tidy ones. That's what you have under Gacy's house. He had no more love for those kids than the Cambodian government had for its victims. If anything, he probably had more hate. That's his fuel. And that's how you'll get him to talk."

Even though the conversation was being recorded, Holden whipped out his notebook and scribbled like a madman. As he wrote, he asked, "Why did he hate them?" He wasn't sure if he was asking himself or Ed, but Ed was happy to provide an answer.

"Because he's queer, and he resented them for making him feel how he did."

Holden paused in the middle of a sentence. "We know about Gacy's proclivities but, according to their families, most of the victims weren't homosexual. They weren't male prostitutes or otherwise high-risk victims."

"They _were_ high-risk," Ed refuted. "They were Gacy's type. I went for coeds. He went for young men. Most of them had longer hair, similar features. Look at the whole spread. Some of them could have been brothers."

Without even consulting a photo lineup of the dead, Holden knew Ed was right. Gacy had attacked men and teenagers with traits he found attractive.

"But if he was sexually attracted to them, wouldn't that imply fondness?" Holden asked.

"Are rapists fond of their victims? Sometimes—I certainly was—but not often."

Holden thought of the interview with Montie Rissell. He had started off a rapist and progressed to murder because his first victim had faked enjoying the experience. There had certainly been no affection there.

"Then there's the fact that he tortured them for hours or days before killing them. I never wanted to make anyone suffer. Except maybe my mother. But I didn't drag it out, even with her."

Holden chose not to bring up the fact some of Ed's victims had "leaked to death," as the killer had put it. Ed would just chalk it up to inexperience, and say his later kills were quick and painless. It was true pure, intentional torture had not been a part of Ed's signature, and all his mutilations occurred after death.

"You can love someone and kill them. I don't think you can love someone and take a blowtorch to them," Ed said.

Holden mentally traversed a wide range of cases where people had killed victims they reportedly loved. Husbands killing wives, boyfriends murdering girlfriends, even parents killing children. Some of the cases had been ghastly, but he couldn't pin one down that was as prolonged and nasty as what Gacy had inflicted on his prey.

"I think you're right, Ed. That's where we'll focus: on his hatred for his victims." Holden, already assembling a game plan in his head, tucked his notebook away. He was reaching for the tape recorder when he realized Ed was calling his name.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Ed asked playfully when Holden finally returned to the world outside his head.

"No, this should be..." Holden's words trailed off when he realized Ed was holding the shiv. The weapon was almost comically small in Ed's huge hands, like a prop stolen from Munchkinland.

The look on Holden's face suggested he'd just been told Christmas was canceled because Santa Claus died of cancer. Ed wasn't sure if he'd ever seen disappointment etched so deeply into someone, and he'd introduced teenagers to mortality.

"You can't say I wasn't fair, or that I didn't uphold my end of the bargain," Ed said.

"But I have to interview John Wayne Gacy next week," Holden protested. As far as reasons to be spared went, it had to be original, if nothing else.

Ed stood up, reminding Holden all over again how tall and imposing he was. "Holden, don't you think every person who ever died had plans for next week?"

They most likely had, Holden wanted to say, but he had more than that. He had a task, a mission. There was still so much left undone, so much he wanted to accomplish. And it wasn't like he was terminally ill! All he needed was for Ed not to stab him!

Rage at the sheer unfairness of it mingled with terror at Ed's slow, calm approach. Part of Holden snarled and showed its teeth, even as it was cornered. It demanded he die biting and clawing, doing as much damage as possible. Another part, more dignified and stoic, suggested he face the end with his head held high. A rather large portion of his brain was white, blinding panic. The closer Ed got, the more the faction of panic gained ground on the others. By the time Ed was out of sight somewhere behind him, Holden's mind was a maelstrom.

Holden tried to slow his breathing. He didn't want to die having a panic attack in front of Ed. But then there was a hand rubbing slow circles on his back, and Ed's voice, low and soothing, and Holden felt himself slipping into the void. Pain tightened across his chest and snapped his throat closed.

The hand that had been caressing his back was suddenly tangled in his hair. Holden tried to shout and found he couldn't even peep. Wildly, he thought of how stupid he'd been to keep his hair anything but buzzed. Bill had the right idea. Nothing to grab. Nothing to allow a monster to inexorably draw his head back, exposing the vulnerability of his throat.

The back of Holden's head gently pressed against the softness of Ed's belly. Holden, eyes wide and pupils dilated with adrenaline, stared upward. Right into Ed's placid face. Nothing about Ed's expression held menace or murder. The only thing that betrayed him was his eyes. They were depthless, abyssal. Things that had never seen sunlight swam there.

"Don't move," Ed said. "You don't want me to miss."

Before Holden could react, Ed had drawn the knife across his throat. From just below his left ear to just below the right, there was a sudden line of fire. As soon as he made the cut, Ed released Holden's hair and stepped back.

Instinctively, Holden's hands flew to his throat in an effort to stop the bleeding. His heart rate, already elevated to dangerous levels, climbed even higher. Every breath became a gargantuan effort Holden knew he couldn't sustain for long.

Every breath.

He could still breathe.

The realization crept in slowly. If he was breathing, Ed hadn't severed his trachea. If he was thinking about basic anatomy, his blood pressure wasn't tanking from rapid exsanguination. His fingers were definitely wet, but they weren't soaked from a high-pressured stream of blood.

Holden took one hand off his throat. There was no immediate gout of blood, just a few slow trickles that wound down into the collar of his shirt. Holden removed the other hand and waited a few seconds. He continued actively bleeding, but not with any sort of intensity.

Taking a deep breath, Holden probed at the damage. There was a definite cut he could trace, but it was shallow. Not much deeper than a shaving nick, just much longer. It was still bleeding, though even without any pressure being applied to it, it seemed the languid flow was slowing down on its own.

His legs as shaky as his breathing, Holden slowly rose from the chair. The world spun for a minute, and he was forced to reach out for the table. His hands left smudged, bloody prints on the metal.

The vertigo passed and Holden released his grip on the edge of the table. Though the worst of the panic had given way to relief at just being alive, Holden still couldn't say he felt safe. There was no doubt in his mind that Ed had held back. The huge bastard was strong enough to slice Holden open clean to his vertebrae. If he'd restrained himself when he was that close to a kill, there had to be a good reason.

Holden turned from the table and found Ed several feet away. The killer presented his empty hands to Holden. There was blood on the right one. Holden's stomach flopped like a dying fish.

"I consider this a good compromise," Ed said. "You got what you came for, and I had fun, too. Oh, you might want to clean yourself up before you leave. You've got something right here." Ed motioned at his own throat.

The thought of explaining to anyone what had happened twisted Holden's guts even more. He looked around wildly for something he could use to wipe off the blood. Ed helpfully presented him with half a cup of room temperature water and a few napkins. No doubt the remains of whatever lunch he'd cadged off the guards.

It wasn't a thorough job, but with his tie positioned just right and his collar buttoned, it wasn't obvious he'd been slashed. Holden believed he'd make it out of the building without drawing attention, especially if he kept his head down. He balled up the used napkins and discovered he had nowhere to throw them away. He settled for tucking them into his trouser pocket.

"There's one more thing," Ed said once Holden was presentable.

"Ed, I won't survive 'one more thing.'"

Like a magic trick, Ed pulled the shiv from his sleeve. He presented it to Holden, taped handle pointing towards the FBI agent.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" Holden asked, beleaguered and bewildered.

"Keep it with my cards. Take it with you to meet the clown, in case he wants to show you his rope trick. Drop it in the sewer. Whatever floats your boat."

"I don't want it."

"And I can't have it. It's contraband."

"Oh my God." Holden found himself taking the knife and hiding it in the middle of his notebook. That way there was no risk it would slice the lining of his jacket pocket.

His gift given and received, Ed graciously gestured toward the door. "I don't want to hold you up any longer. You and Bill have a lot to prepare for. You're meeting John Wayne Gacy next week, after all. I expect to hear all about it."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The rope trick is actually a term Gacy used. It's strangulation with a ligature. So, no, not a trick you can do at most parties.


End file.
